Interesting, Bob - when I last tested this, my vision was much closer to 4:3.
What I did was focus on the same point straight ahead, than got someone to move a pointer up / down / left / right on a wall, until it disappeared from my peripheral vision.

But that's just me - maybe some folks are fitted with widescreen eyes.

Showing my age...

I recall my aunt Helen being the first in our family to have a TV of any kind and it was a tiny ROUND tube of about 10 inches circa 1952 or so. Anyone know why the industry deceided on the 4/3 ratio? I'm guessing it had something to do with deflecting the CRT's beams and something based on 16/9 or some other aspect would have caused lots of problems.

For those that think I'm kidding:

http://antiqueradio.org/art/halli50504.jpg

Found this on the net -

The History Of Cinema Aspect Ratios

The original aspect ratio utilized by the motion picture industry was 4:3 and according to historical accounts, was decided in the late 19th century by Thomas Edison while he was working with one of his chief assistants, William L.K. Dickson. As the story goes, Dickson was working with a new 70MM celluloid-based film stock supplied by photographic entrepreneur George Eastman. Because the 70MM format was considered unnecessarily wasteful by Edison, he asked Dickson to cut it down into smaller strips. When Dickson asked Edison what shape he wanted imaged on these strips, Edison replied, "about like this" and held his fingers apart in the shape of a rectangle with approximately a 4:3 aspect ratio. Over the years there has been quite a bit of conjecture about what Edison had inmind when he dictated this shape. Theories vary from Euclid's famous Greek "Golden Section", a shape ofapproximately 1.6 to 1, to a shape that simply saved money by cutting the existing 70MM Eastman film stock in half. Whatever the true story may be, Edison's 4:3 aspectratio was officially adopted in 1917 by the Society Of Motion Picture Engineers as their first engineering standard, and the film industry used it almost exclusivelyfor the next 35 years. Because of the early precedent set by the motion picture industry with the 4:3 aspect ratio, the television industry adopted the same when television broadcasting began inthe 1930s, and today the 4:3 aspect ratio is still the standard for virtually all television monitor and receiver designs.

Peter,
you are right but, for how long to you normally stare at the one spot. It's pretty normal for our eyes to scan the field of view. Try the same test but move your eyes from left to right. I think you'll see why the ultrawide screen formats were developed for cinema. Although one could argue that TV shouldn't be a cinematic experience.

Bob.

Oh come on guys. It's not about teh aspect ration but ability of the DP to "open up" the frame. I've seen many full frame movies that have lots of breathing room for the eyes and many letterboxed that are way too claustrophobic. If you compose properly for whichever format your image will look "real" no matter what.

Here's a picture showing a resolution chart shot by an XL2 in 16:9 and 4:3 mode. The 4:3 shot is obviously sharper. Although the XL2 CCD sensor is 960x480 in 16:9 mode, it has to be downsampled to 720x480 for DV and inevitably there is some loss of sharpness involved.

http://www.icexpo.com/XL2-16x9-vs-4x3.JPG

If you are interested in more background to this, there is a thread in another forum (link below).

Richard Hunter

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36373&perpage=40&pagenumber=2

There's some VERY interesting info there that relates to another issue, downsampling and aliasing. The DV limitation of 360cps and what happens if it's not done right is terribly pertinent to my problems with HiRes stills.
From what's being said there we need a LoPass filter to solve the problem which I'd sort of worked out myself. This isn't a Vegas issue, you get the same problems with a lot of DVD menus as well, I mean the players own menus!.

Now I know someone else knows this is the core of the issue all I need is someone who can write a LP filter for DV, perferably one with a very sharp knee.

Bob.